Tournament Poker for Advanced Players

It's informative in specific tournament types. It zeros in on details for that specific game.

Sitting down to read a book by David Sklansky there's a comfort knowing that he's not going to steer you wrong. Which is more than can be said about a lot of the poker books that are out there. This is a man that knows his theory, and is not shy about letting you know it, to be frank. In Tournament Poker for Advanced Players Sklansky is his typical informed self, and the advice he gives on how to play based on stack, blinds, and other contextual information is pretty useful, if a little broad in places. His suggestions on maximizing value and winning percentage is also pretty solid and one of Sklansky's real strengths. Still, I can't help thinking that there are better books out there, and some of them by Sklansky himself. If you have a particular love of Sklansky's insight and writing style you should definitely consider adding this to your shelf, but otherwise you may just want to save up for Harrington on Hold'em 1 & 2.

First, some of you may be interested in how this new expanded edition compares to the previous edition. I don't have the previous edition, but in this new expanded edition, there are viii + 346 pages, including the 8-page index. The principal new portion is Part Five: "Additional No-Limit Hold'em Concepts" which runs from page 214 to page 282. The rear cover flatly states that this edition "contains over 100 pages of updated material." Having read about 1/3 of the text so far, my conclusion is that this book will be helpful to those who are beginner-to-intermediate tournament players, but who are already familiar with the basics of No-Limit Hold'Em (NLHE). This volume contains many useful hand examples, but it is not loaded down with irrelevant mathematics of the "if you have this and he has that or that or that, and he then does this X% of the time, then you should bet Y% of the pot" etc. In other words, this book focuses more on effective strategies at different parts of the tournament rather than on the supercilious "I'm a math genius and you're not" writing that characterizes the NLHE: Theory and Practice volume, also by Sklanksy and Miller. There is advice on what to do if you want to maximize your expected gain, or what to do if you want to maximize your chance of winning outright with expected gain be darned. Several alternative suggestions are presented on how to play certain hands depending on stack size, stage of the tournament, etc. The advice strikes a balance between being specific and general in nature. Part Four: "Hand Quizzes" runs from page 156 to page 211. Unfortunately, only 11 out of the 50 hand quizzes are specifically concerned with No-Limit Hold'Em, although maybe another 9 or 10 questions concern Limit Hold'Em. The rest concern Omaha and Hi-Low and Stud and other uninteresting forms of poker. There are a few typos and inadvertent grammatical errors, but not enough to be too annoying. If you are already an experienced NLHE tournament player, then you probably don't need this volume.

I've been playing poker for about a year before I purchased this book. I thought I had a handle on tournaments since I play in at least three a week here but, being that they are free tourneys, they are not the same as real-money tourneys and the player's mentalities aren't the same. I played in one real-money tourney at the Aladdin in Vegas and placed 56th of 89 players (it was a bad beat, but still); two days later, after reading his book, I placed 6th out of 98 players and I would've finished better had I not deviated from his advice (I probably would've been 5th or 4th, due to chip count). To be honest, I called a raise with a hand he advises to open with but not call or raise with. It was my mistake. I highly recommend this book, even if you're not an "advanced" player (so long as you're semi-intelligent enough to understand his concepts).

Tournaments and cash games require different strategies. In fact, many winning cash players avoid tournaments, and many successful tournament players (including a few famous champions) do poorly or even avoid cash games.Chris Ferguson, winner of the 2000 World Series of Poker, is one of those champions. With his immense talent he could certainly beat most cash games. However, because he has an ideal tournament strategy, he concentrates on them because he has a bigger edge. Chris has called it: "The best poker tournament poker book ever written."We've all read that tournaments make unusual demands, but they have never been clearly defined, and nobody told us exactly how to adjust to them. I've read nearly all of the tournament books, and they all disappointed me. Their greatest weakness is teaching basic poker strategy. You and I already know that strategy, but what else do we have to do?This book answers that question. Unlike other tournament books, it does not try to teach us how to play good poker. Sklansky wrote: "This book ... will explain how your play should differ when in a tournament from how you play in a regular game... This book will show you exactly where strategy changes, compared to normal games, are indicated, and why. What this book will not do, however, is teach you how to play good poker. It assumes that you already do that. The changes that you make in a tournament won't help you much if you don't already play well."The table of contents clearly shows this difference. There are no chapters on types of games (such as Omaha or hold'em), or how to play on third street, or any of the subjects of most poker books.Instead, the entire focus is on subjects that matter only in tournaments. A few chapter are titled: "Prize Structure Implications," "When Will Your Table Break Up?," "Adjusting Strategy Because the Stakes Rise," "Just Out of the Money," "The Last Table," "Down to Two Players," and "Making Deals."My favorite chapter was "The Gap Concept" because it affects so many hands. He wrote: "The difference between the hand you need to call an opener with, and that with which you would open yourself, I call the 'Gap.' ... in a tournament, this Gap is often extremely high. In other words, in a tournament it is often right to open raise with hands far inferior to those with which you would need to call someone else who open raised. ..." Dan Negreanu, a world class tournament and cash player, recently praised this chapter in "Cardplayer" magazine, and he also stated that it is: "the first book that clearly explains exactly how and why your strategy changes in poker tournaments."Since I live in Las Vegas and write about poker, I meet lots of talented players, and everyone praises this book. Parts of this review were taken from my "Poker Digest" series, "Darwin at the poker table." Darwin's central principle is that situational changes create new demands, and only those who adapt to them survive. Poker is a game of information managemen